Tossing the Coin
by emsana
Summary: John doesn't always leave life to luck. McShep.


Tossing the Coin

AN: If I owned SGA not only would there be McShep, there would also be an excess of angst. Enjoy?

--

When John signed on to the Air Force he pretty much prepared himself for death. He knew when you signed onto the military you also signed onto Fate one day tossing her coin over you and the man next to you. He never believed in the 'bullet with your name on it', but he did believe you had to be ready to be wrong. John didn't believe in luck either; he wouldn't say he made his own, but he liked to think he had a bit more control over his own life than that. Heads of tails, colonel?

-

John was just about ready to make peace with his maker when he joined the Atlantis team but he still liked to give himself some leeway and through caution to the wind on top of a hill on a warm afternoon. He had rules in his life, but he didn't see the point in having them if he wasn't going to break them. Funnily enough, it would be Fate that broke them for him. When he told McKay how he'd chosen to take the trip he'd cried with laughter. God, to see him laugh one more time, to see him cry.

-

Look after the man next to you, and he'll look after you. If only McKay had been next to him at the time. If only Major Sebag hadn't taken his eye off that Dart for five seconds. If only Rodney hadn't begrudgingly agreed to take the milk-run. If only. John tried to rationalise and point out that he'd be dead too if he'd been there, that if things had gone differently it could have been more that two names struck off the role call. One less jumper in the bay. Though, sometimes, he wishes he couldn't have added one more shot glass to the shelf, and never get to see if filled. It's not much to ask, but it's enough that it'll never happen.

-

There aren't more memories than uniforms and reconnaissance and labs. They were both too professional, didn't want to screw things up for the mission, for each other, for themselves. Hell, John would pull the trigger himself, press the button, relish the countdown. He'd sink the city back beneath the waves, and all the banal memories with it. Tomorrow he'll tell himself he's an idiot and get up and go to work and ignore the people who don't know quite how to be around him any more, or why. Today he's asking himself what he did wrong, didn't do right, could have done differently. It was just a milk run, you couldn't have known. But he should have known, and he should have been there, and he shouldn't have cared about the consequences, as long as this version wasn't one of them. It's not a question of him or McKay. It's a question of him or anything but that, God, _anything_.

-

The protocol he resents now, for putting up the walls, for making him think first act later, is his saving grace. Get up, get dressed, do your boots up extra tight. Do the job. Take your boots off, get undressed, go to bed. He doesn't really sleep much now, and when he does he dreams of things so ordinary and pointless and insignificant he can't bear it. He'd rather lie awake wishing he'd done the same with Rodney beside him. He tries to occupy himself but he sometimes feels like he's being selfish, that he should be hurting and screaming inside and desperate to bash his head against the wall until it's numb and he can't think, can think, because he doesn't know how to any more, or how not to, or anything. He has no idea how to act, how to grieve over this loss, how to not let it all consume him because maybe he wants it to.

-

He tossed a coin and called heads in the bathroom across from his corridor. He's locked the door and prayed that if it isn't tails no-one will be able to get through in time; he's been taught well - by the best. But it isn't even best of three, and if he were a suspicious man he'd think something didn't want him to die, but he's still trying to cheat Fate so he decides to do it anyway. And can't. He cries into sink and spends, he doesn't know how long with his knees against his chest and back against the wall letting himself forget to breathe. When he's finally less than human again he can stand, and even manages to go and tell a technician that the mirror in the men's bathroom is broken before he passes out. It could have been the blood loss, all that smashed glass, but the penny's still clenched between his fingers when he regains conciousness – he never wakes up – so he thinks maybe he just needed to rest, because even sleeping takes it out of him these days.

-

Rodney tried to teach him chess once. He just about had the hang of it when the Jumper crash landed and killed the pilot instantly. No one told him it would have taken hours for the compartments to fill with water, that it would have been slow, and terrifying, but he read the report so he knows. He's glad he never won though, that way things can never change, Rodney still has to come back so he can try. Once he got close, and then ended up letting McKay check his King. He stole one of Rodney's pieces and made him fight to get it back. There was a moment there, whilst they were lying on their backs laughing, and John's convinced he never was happier. The almost messed up there, almost went too far, but they never let it go enough for either of them to regret it. The chess set is still in Rodney's room, but John has rules in his life he won't let himself break so he's never going back in there again.

-

The recording from the crash may still be in the computer logs, John doesn't know. He can't remember if he heard it at the time or not, he thinks he must have. He knows people who say they hear answer-phone recordings of people they've lost and that it makes them feel better, better or worse. He can't even imagine what it would feel like to hear Rodney's voice again, but the sane part of him is trying to move on, trying to save himself, from himself, so he'll never look for it. Not yet anyway.

-

Sometime later he's able to get up without thinking, breathe without despising the oxygen. He can notice Rodney isn't in the Jumper when it goes through the gate and not want to shout the universe down until someone else acknowledges this. He wonders if they knew, know, and doesn't really care.

So one of these days, he'll toss a coin, and whether it's heads or it's tails it'll still mean the same, and he'll still be beside him, wherever he goes, and whenever he's going.

-

Fin.


End file.
